


Atlas

by HouseOfFinches



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Escape, F/M, Introspection, Loneliness, Sad, Self-Reflection, The Raft Prison (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-13 22:32:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13580307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HouseOfFinches/pseuds/HouseOfFinches
Summary: Vision reflects, post Civil War.A bit mopey.





	Atlas

_Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why._

_***********************************_

  
Time moves forward.  
Except, he knows, time really doesn’t move at all.

Time is linear. Perhaps that is what they meant.

Semantics, semantics.

In this moment, however, time felt like a vortex, a blackhole. What happens to time when, succumbing to its own demise, a star collapses in on itself? No one knows. Not yet. Though he was sure it resembled the ache in his chest, that wrenching that convinced him, perhaps, he might be dying.

He checked his systems. He was not dying. Yet the pain persisted, unresolved.

Time is linear but the days dragged on, as if mocking him and his sense of order. Since her leave he’d become quiet, a specter among the gray halls, a ghost in a room she did not haunt.

Numb. _Mechanic_.

He supposed his somber mood was to be expected. He supposed he too might be subject to something like depression, a lack of synthetic serotonin to awaken his neurons, a stagnation of sodium and calcium.

 _The presence of that absence is everywhere._  
He read that once, somewhere, sometime, and now he felt it, poignant, stinging. He felt it in the kitchen, when her favorite mug stood unused. He felt it in her room, in the way the insence settled, lost to the atmosphere. Mostly he felt it at night, in the quiet of his mind and the emptiness of his arms.

He thought back, when she first came to the tower, the loss of her brother fresh. He thought of the curve of her shoulders, the weight of grief almost too much for her slender frame to bear. He wished to touch her, back then, to draw her close and make her lighter, to shift her atoms the way his shifted. He knew now that such weight wasn’t born of the body, it was a weight manifested in the mind, a perception that nerves transcribed as reality.

He could float away now and that weight would still press against his chest, a singularity that crushed time and hope into an impossible density, all in the shape of one artificial biological heart.

A heart that was human in design, an irony: robotically made flesh in the image of man—made to destroy mankind. He supposed there was a poetry to it, like the way God must view humanity: made in His image, yet removed, fallen, _flawed_. His conception then, logically, was imperfect.

And in this moment he resented that flaw— that weakness that was human emotion, the raw ache that burned in his core, muttering _it isn’t fair_. It wasn’t fair, to feel these sentiments and yet have no where to guide them, no action to be done.

Unless...

The idea whirled around his head, piece by piece, nauseatingly exciting, dangerous, _deceptive_.

He was bound to Tony by analysis, by conclusion, by a sense of duty.

But he was also bound to Wanda, a product of affection, of love—of humanity.

A war did not burn within him because a war was unnecessary: when it came to her, there was no room for doubt, no room for second-guessing.

Time was linear, but time was also infinite. In other universes he was standing at this crossroads, unsure of himself. But in this universe, in this time, he was certain of his choice, of her.

He would set into play the motion, pull the brick that lead to collapse. He would contact Steve and provide the information necessary to aid her escape from her prison.

This much he could do. This much he had control over

Yet the weight continued to grow, the nova in his chest denser and denser. He could facilitate her release but he could not facilitate her response.

Would she want to see him, to embrace him as before? Or had the raft made her hard, cold and distant, the space allowing her to see how foolish her feelings for him had been?

Surely she could not forgive him. Perhaps he didn’t deserve her forgiveness. Perhaps this was a righteous punishment, this albatross, this stinging loneliness.

But only time would tell, in its linear fashion, its slow unfurling, second by agonizing second. And in this way, he realized, time can only move forward.

 

 

 


End file.
